Yes, all the carriers are trying to "milk" the watch cow
. Most carriers wants $10 per-month for the watch with a qualifying phone plan. For T-Mobile, pre-paid phone plans are not qualified and the only post-paid plane I can find is $70 per-month unless you have 4 lines which is $40 per-month per-line. In contrast, my current pre-paid plan is only $30 per-month and it has enough minutes (100), messages (unlimited) and data (5G) for my usage. I was not willing to pay more than double just to be able to use the watch.
It would have been perfect to use an LTE watch with a phone, even with the $10 monthly charge. Unfortunately it seems the carriers are choking this off, even if unintentionally. I'm afraid the LTE version would disappear pretty quickly. Best Buy is no longer selling the LTE version in stores any more.